Known computing devices support execution of application software, also known as applications or ‘apps’, for providing a wide variety of tasks. Many known computing devices have a touch-screen user interface through which a user can control operation of an application by user input in the form of touches on a touch-sensitive screen. To open an application, a user will usually press a soft-key icon associated with the application which is displayed on the home screen of the device, or select the application from a menu using one or more hard-wired input keys. When the application opens, it will typically display a screen with a number of touch-sensitive soft-key icons or menus through which the user can control the application.
If a user wishes to switch from using one application to another application, the user will have to navigate out of the application currently being used, open the other application and control it separately via input on a different screen display. During this time, the screen displayed by the application initially being used will have been removed. If the user then wishes to return to the application initially being used again, then the user will have to navigate back to that application, at which point the screen display will be switched back to a screen displayed by the initial application. Such user interaction is inefficient and can seem clumsy to the user thus detracting from the user experience.
The above problem is exacerbated if the computing device comprises a mobile telephony device and the user is conducting a call using their mobile telephony device such that an in-call screen application is displaying an in-call screen with soft-key icons associated with actions available during the call. If the user wishes to use a different application or function on their mobile telephony device during the call, the user has to navigate away from the in-call screen, control the other application, and then navigate back to the in-call screen application again afterwards. Such user interaction is undesirable during a call, not just because the local party to the call has to carry out the multiple navigation steps, but also because the remote party to the call is kept waiting and is unable to converse with the local party to the call whilst such navigation is taking place.
It would therefore be desirable to provide improved methods for user interaction with computing devices having touch-screen user interfaces, including user interaction associated with multiple software applications on mobile telephony devices.